Subversion of the Constitution?

Way back in the 1930’s when I was a little girl, my family was really pretty socially conservative.  I was taught that one did not mention any other portion of one’s anatomy other than arms or legs.  The portion of the anatomy to which these appendages were attached was simply ‘the body’.  At least, “nice” girls did not.  “Nice” girls didn’t do a whole lot of things that are perfectly acceptable today, like flirt, for instance.  And it was impressed on me over and over that I must not ever let a boy know that I was smarter than he, although at the same time I was expected to get all A’s in all of my classes except any math, because everyone knew girls were not good in math.  All of a girl’s life was proscribed by what men might think of her actions.  Not only her physical looks, but how she acted, spoke, or thought about things.  The objective was to get married, and have her husband make all of these decisions for her. 

It was much later in life that I learned where this extreme attitude had come from.  Life for women was difficult enough before the Protestant Reformation.  During and after in those areas of Europe where the Reformation dominated, the attitude that material success followed directly on the heels of someone who acknowledged that Salvation was by faith alone, and that justification could be brought about by accepting the Christian Scriptures as literal.  By making salvation by faith alone, the concept of also doing good works to help one achieve salvation was lost.  The end result of this was that if a man were successful it meant he had been saved and God was pleased with him.  To let his neighbors know that he was successful he would have a submissive wife and children, and material goods to show off.  With his family, he was the final authority figure.  What he said, went, so to speak.  This gave him permission to beat his wife and children if they didn’t do exactly as he said.  To keep women out of the public arena and in the kitchen, they would be deprived of any education more than that needed to read the Bible to the family.  Men had total control.  Nice for the guys; not so good for the gals.  My childhood was sort of a lingering cloud of that attitude, although my parents were adamant that I should go to college; not to become wise, but to find a husband.  That came later, much to their distress because they felt my college expenses had been wasted! 

When the feminist movement began, I certainly agreed with a great many of their positions, although I never ever burned a bra!  I was thrilled that my own four daughters could choose any profession they wanted, or if possible, could stay home and raise a family, or do both, if they chose to do that.  Birth control was easily attainable, although I will admit the first time I was leaning on a counter at the local drug store and realized I was leaning on a display of condoms, I was somewhat startled.  It took me awhile to realize that although I am not in favor of abortion, abortion needs to be safe and legal for those women who do not agree with me, and that their lives are sacred, too.  In short, it had seemed, up until about 1980 that although women had achieved a great amount of equality, they still had a pretty long way to go in some areas, like equal pay for equal work.  But as examples, women could have their own credit cards, buy and sell their own stock, and have their own bank accounts.  Actions that were not possible in my youth.

During the past 12-15 years, the welling up amongst fundamentalist Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, of some of the attitudes toward women that I experienced as a young woman disturbed me, but then I figured if that is what they wanted to believe, it’s a free country, with freedom of religion.  But during these past few years these fundamentalist attitudes, whether overtly religious or not, in the political arena toward women are dragging women back to those years that were so terribly constrictive for them.  The Catholic Church taking on women theologians and women religious, and attempting to put them back under the thumb of the all-male hierarchy; all of the anti-abortion legislation in Republican State legislatures, particularly those such as Virginia requiring transvaginal probes for ultrasounds before an abortion, but the worst of all occurring this past week in the state legislature of Michigan.

What happened there?  Two female legislators have been banned indefinitely from speaking for saying “vagina” during an abortion debate.  Majority Floor Leader, Jim Stamas, was so offended by State Representative Lisa Brown’s use of the word “vagina” that he took the above action.  Her statement was, “I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”  What should she have said?  Perhaps, going back to my childhood, “That portion of my anatomy that lies between where my legs attach to my body.”  His sense of what a proper woman should do and say directly influenced his reaction.  Who gave him the right to decide what Representative Brown could say, so long as she said it in a civil manner in a civil setting?

The Radical Right doesn’t see this as a War on Women.  They see this as a divine intervention to get those uppity women back where they belong.  Religious attitudes, whether overtly expressed or not, are becoming part of the political landscape – and that is not freedom of religion.  It is a direct attempt to subvert the First Amendment to the Constitution:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof:”  I charge that this overt attempt to place all of these cultural restrictions on women that derive from some 15^th Century religious zealot is a subversion of the Constitution.